I brought a brand new scale but haven't used it until I tried today. I have a lb of chocolate (which is 16oz, right?) and the dumb thing is reading 5oz. That can't be right! To test it again, I have polenta that reads 18oz on the tube. The scale is reading 6oz. Is there something I'm doing wrong? It's a digital scale. On the back there is a high and low switch and a reset button. I've tried these different things, getting different readings each time but not a reading that is right! The scale didn't come with an instruction booklet or anything like that.

Test it with water. Often times, a container of food is reporting fluid oz, and not weight. 1 liter of water weighs about 1 kg. Doing some math, 1 quart of water should weigh 33.4 oz. 1 cup of water should weigh 8.3 oz. Remember to tare the scale (account for the weight of the container).

There should be button that says tare which brings scale to zero but usually thats when you are weighing in a containet you set container on scale and hit tare then add ingredients.But I dont think thats your problem.Can you post a picture?